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Novelist Chaim Potok died Tuesday at the age of 73. Potok was raised in the Orthodox Jewish tradition, was ordained as a rabbi, and later became a best-selling author of the novels The Chosen, The Promise and My Name is Asher Lev. Much of his writing explored the conflict between spiritual and secular worlds, a subject that earned him readers from all faiths. This interview first aired in 1986.

Our summer reading series profiles novelist Jackie Collins, author of 22 novels, including Lucky and Hollywood Wives. This summer Collins is reading Her (Knopf; ISBN: 037541388X) by Laura Zigman, Billy (Overlook Press; ISBN: 1585673080) by Pamela Stephenson, and Killing Pablo (Penguin USA; ISBN: 0142000957) by Mark Bowden.

While working at a blueprint shop in Charleston, South Carolina, a customer brought in some Confederate money to order a blowup. The imagery shocked Jones. The money showed slaves. Jones began to collect the brown and gray money with slaves picking cotton, corn and tobacco and loading barrels cheerfully. He then created large scale full color paintings based on the images. The art is now on display at America's Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

In a series of reports for Morning Edition, NPR Beijing correspondent Rob Gifford profiles five people from across China who symbolize the massive changes the country is undergoing as it makes its transition away from communism. The latest segment features Wu Dongmei, a young woman who, in search of a better life, migrated 1,000 miles from her village to work at a clothing factory.

Jude Johnstone has written songs for some of the biggest stars in the music business, including Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Nicks, Trisha Yearwood and Johnny Cash. Now the songwriter has stepped up to the microphone to perform her own songs on a debut CD. Renie Montagne profiles Johnstone and her music on Morning Edition. (8:50) Jude Johnstone's album, Coming of Age, is on the independent BoJak Records label.

On July 29, 1967, 134 U.S. sailors were killed aboard the USS Forrestal in Vietnam's Gulf of Tonkin. They fought a fire that threatened to destroy the ship and the 6,000 men aboard. On Weekend Edition Saturday, Scott Simon talks to the author of a new book about the fire.

Security-minded lawmakers are turning their attention to the U.S. chemical industry, because chemicals from a sabotaged plant could threaten lives of millions of people in cities across the nation. NPR's Jack Speer travels to Freeport, Texas, where Dow Chemical operates one of the nation's biggest chemical plants.

For Kentucky students wanting to participate in sports, their sex would be determined by the sex printed on their birth certificate and an affidavit from a doctor ascertaining that information.

Alfred Mosher Butts, an out-of-work architect, invented a game that players say perfectly balances skill and luck, risk and reward. As part of Morning Edition's Present at the Creation series, sportswriter and Scrabble expert Stefan Fatsis explores the unlikely origins of an American game.

This week the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival features Steve Straight, whose new book of poems, The Water Carrier, was just released by Curbstone Press. He's an English professor and director of the poetry program at Manchester Community College in Manchester, Conn. He reads his poem, "Lesson" for Weekend Edition Saturday. We also pays homage to independent producer Phyllis Joffe, who filed nearly 175 stories for NPR over 20 years, including producing the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival. Joffe died last weekend.